Every morning at 8 am, residents of Faridabad’s Nangla Jogian village drop what they are doing and stand in attention, hands by their side, as 16 loudspeakers come to life with the familiar tune of the national anthem. They know it’s time thanks to the announcement: “It is now time for the national anthem, and you are all requested to stand for the same.”
Soon afterwards, people can be seen getting to their feet — shopkeepers manning stores leave their plastic chairs, children stop their games, while a group of women with children on their hips pause mid-conversation. Even tempos and cars come to a halt. Stating that the idea was to instill a sense of pride and patriotism in people, village sarpanch Gulshan Keena said, “We wanted to start this practice since last October, when we heard of a similar thing in Telangana. But it took us a lot of time to arrange for funding. As a result, we were only able to execute the plan from the first week of June.”
Read more of this in a report by Sakshi Dayal published in The Indian Express....
(Earlier similar reports of national anthem being played in Telengana villages had also come. - Editor)
